


Come Back Down

by orphan_account



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Dreaming, Fluff, Love and Loss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25028914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Ash watches Eiji jump so briefly, so shockingly into his life, only to disappear into the sky, forcing Ash to wonder if he’d ever come back down.A one shot where Eiji dies instead of Ash.
Relationships: Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji
Comments: 7
Kudos: 95





	Come Back Down

**Author's Note:**

> Banana Fish. It’s okay, we can cry about it here

Eiji leapt too high- Ash told him it might happen one day. Of course, It was a joke back then. 

“Seriously, Ash, that’s not how that works,” Eiji laughed, amused by the thought of himself being launched so far into the endless sky that he’d never meet solid ground again. 

“Well, maybe not. But there’s got to be something terrifying about pole jumping, flinging your whole body like that.” Ash said, allowing the afternoon sun to glower above his skin, too content with black hairs tickling the sides of his arm to lift it and cover his face for shade.

Eiji considered the thought with a low “hmmm”, interrupted by a quick sneeze and brief sniffles. It was spring, though it was too early for fields of daisies and lilacs. It was the in-between season of pollen allergies and erratic thunderstorms. The boys took what they could get, lying close on the damp, hilly earth with little room for complaint. 

“I suppose so. Pole vaulting is considered the deadliest track sport, after all," Ash turned his head with ripe disbelief, meeting the perpetual dimple of Eiji's smile. His eyes glittered as he watched the clouds over folded hands, either blissfully unaware or uncaring of the comment's dreary insinuation. 

"What, and that doesn't scare you? Gambling your life every time you decide to make the jump?" He knew Eiji was no delicate flower: The pinpricks of sweat just under his hairline and sudden gnash of teeth over his lips as he kicked off the dirt to hurl and arch like a shooting star left him untouchable. He wouldn’t take a risk that great if he didn’t know what he was doing. Still, the thought of an incredible leap cutting short from the snap of a pole, crashing Eiji back down to Earth like a broken bird churned in Ash’s stomach. 

"Hm, gambling my life. Sounds awfully familiar," Eiji said. Ash glared at his smug, annoyingly honest face, having nothing to say to that. Eiji tilted his head and let their noses bump, softening the other’s eyes with the pure gesture- an apology of sorts. They chose to ignore the gray clouds beginning to form above them for just five more minutes of this. 

Eiji shrugged against the grass, “It’s not like I can jump like I used to, with my injury and all, but for some reason I could never see myself being hurt from the pole when I trained like I did back in highschool. The pole was an... an..” he scrunched his nose, the way he did when English failed his Japanese tongue, searching for the right word to describe it perfectly to Ash, “an extension. Extension of me. If I let it guide me up, there would be no way for it to fail me.” 

The logic was faulty at best, and Ash would have taken the time to calmly explain there was no guarantee he’d land safely, no way to assure he wouldn’t panic being tossed into thin air, losing form and breaking his neck on impact, no sure reason the pole wouldn’t snap and skewer through him without hesitation. He decided to let his cynicism disappear like sand through his fingers when he studied Eiji‘s neck flushed with boundless adoration and excitement from the mere discussion of the feeling of flight. Ash loathed to clip the wings of an angel like him. He needed cold, detached pessimism to survive- Eiji didn’t 

“Too bad there’s only room for one person on that thing. I’d like to see how it feels like,” Ash humored the boy, who took his words and let them swell into a great smile. He turned his head back up and took his pointer finger into the sky 

“You’re so skinny, you’d go extra high,” and Eiji let his finger zip fast and arch into a tall curve, almost impossibly straight and steep, like the pole had been made into a rocket. Ash snorted but kept watching, entranced with Eiji’s finger presenting him such a gentle, unfulfillable promise. The upward climb of the pole ended right under the sun.

“But no matter how high you’d go, you’d always come back down,” Eiji started the slow descension of the path, sloping steadily downward until he reached the thin horizon line of Earth. The jump was over, and Eiji let his hand fall to his side in triumph.

It was jarring to think Eiji Okumura was now six feet deep below the ground. Some days, Ash thought if he looked up, he’d find the curly-haired boy eclipsing the sun once again in the height of some magnificent jump. Ash thought he could wait an eternity for him to come back down to him if it ever happened.

It didn’t, though. It didn’t happen. It didn’t because Eiji was sent back to Japan to be buried by his family, and Ash was left with nothing. Every action of his life was now mechanic, fueled by the burning hatred over himself, every man he’d killed, every knife wound found in Eiji’s back, every drop of his blood splattered on the gray concrete, every minute Ash had spent unaware it had even happened. 

Right before his flight to Japan, too. That was the thing that really bugged Ash, the thing he knew would continue to vex him until the day he died. He was denied his last glimpse of the sky he loved so much, the one he promised Ash a future in. 

There wasn’t much else Ash could do besides place daisies and lilacs atop a headstone marked one year old. It was barren, of course, but Ash wouldn’t breathe or sleep until he had something made in honor of Eiji, something that would last with him in New York. Ash traced the pole fixed near the engraved stone and turned away. His face was numb and heart rate a mess, but the tears had long since dried. They dried the day after news of Eiji’s death reached him, because crying wouldn’t bring him back, shooting Lao in the head didn’t bring him back, letting his family perform the proper burial rites didn’t bring him back. Nothing did. 

Instead, Ash smiled. He walked from the graveyard and smiled against the sudden clouds and chittering rain against his umbrella. He smiled because of Eiji’s dimple, because of his loose curls, because of his starry eyes, because of his insistence that one day, Ash and him would fly amongst the clouds and fall back down together. 

Ash hated to admit it, but Eiji had made him an optimist after all, because he somehow knew one day he’d see Eiji again. He knew it in the determined way Eiji must have felt when he flew over Ash for the first time, saturated in every emotion but regret, even when his landing stuck in broken glass.

**Author's Note:**

> Sad drabbles are incredibly fun to write yet horrible to read <3 Feedback is nice :)


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